mattberther.com

A new low for the webhost4life folks

2008-11-05T18:38:06Z

Several years ago, I posted about webhost4life and what I considered a good act of customer service by their organization. Reading through the comments, you can see that that post has turned into a sounding board for webhost4life grumblers.

I’ve posted other comments regarding webhost4life on my blog, specifically the comment policy which was related to a comment from a webhost4life representative that I received regarding the post above. He wanted me to delete the negative comments. I replied and described my comment policy to him and have not heard from him since. Or so I thought…

The last two comments on the original post (from Bruce and Bill) interestingly enough came from the same IP. I feel ethically obligated to refrain from revealing the IP address in this post. However, what’s even more interesting is that when a whois lookup is done on that IP, it shows UNI MARKETING ALLIANCE. If you’re not familiar, UNI MARKETING ALLIANCE is the corporation which is doing business as webhost4life.com.

Posting fake comments on a site to attempt to improve your organization’s appearance on the internet is a despicable thing to do. More now than ever, I feel that my decision to leave webhost4life.com has been validated.

To the webhost4life.com folks: rather than posting fake comments on blogs that represent a fair evaluation of your services, you may be better off focusing on improving the service. Customers are much smarter than you give them credit for.

The Morning After

2008-11-06T01:37:31Z

About 10:00 last night, it became apparent that the people of the United States had spoken. They had spoken very clearly that they were ready for the change that Barack Obama was promising. In a very decisive election, Barack Obama has been elected the 44^th President of the United States.

I’d like to congratulate Mr. Obama on a very effective campaign and his ability to appeal to the people of this nation. While I strongly oppose Mr. Obama’s position on almost everything, I do submit to the wisdom of the greater collective. This is now an opportunity for all of us to come together. It is crucial to avoid taking a stance of “Don’t Blame Me” or “Not My President”.

The next four years are going to be very challenging for our country. With a staggering economic crisis and two unfinished wars, President-elect Obama is inheriting a nation in turmoil, but with our support, we may be able to turn things around. As Mr. McCain said last night, we must support Mr. Obama when he is correct, challenge him when we believe he is wrong, and trust in his decisions.

God bless America.

Practicing CI or TDD does not make you agile

2008-09-13T00:10:48Z

All too often, I hear organizations say that they are agile simply because they adopted continuous integration or test driven development. This is simply not the case. It can be easy for organizations to blur the lines between agile development technologies and extreme programming (XP) techniques for delivering high quality software.

The lines can get fuzzy, but the way I like to think about it is to think of agile development as the project management component, while XP is related to the craft of software development. Agile methodologies can help you determine what you’re going to do while XP will be a set of tools and techniques agreed upon by the team to help achieve quality code.

An organization is truly agile when it is capable of responding to change in such a way that it can quickly adjust its priorities to the needs of its customers. No more, no less. An organization becomes agile by collaborating with its customers to determine how to best satisfy the customers needs and then works to ensure those needs are met. Without active engagement of the customer an organization will NEVER be agile, regardless of the other development techniques used.

An interesting predicament

2008-09-12T01:25:08Z

I’m in a bit of an interesting predicament and am wondering what my legal obligations are. A little background:

Several months ago, an e-commerce site that I purchased from had its database compromised and my wife’s company card was used for a fraudulent purchase which was fulfilled through digitalriver.com. The site was very quick with communication and all charges were reversed. We’ve suffered no financial burden whatsoever. What we did get was a CD in the mail fulfilling the “purchase” from digitalriver.com.

As of yet, I have not opened the media. However, it’s nagging at me somewhat. It turns out that this is a piece of software I would like to use. I am just not sure whether I am legally allowed to use the media that was sent to me. The reason for this uncertainty is due to the vendor of this software having already received proceeds for the fraudulent “sale”. Do they need to be paid again?

Does anyone in the blogsphere have thoughts or advice on this? I’m just not sure what I can do with this.

So long, .NET Rocks

2008-09-11T23:49:40Z

For the past several years, I’ve been a religious listener of Carl Franklin’s .NET Rocks podcast. Usually, I’ve found the information presented very relevant and useful. However, as of today, I’ve unsubscribed from the podcast.

I am not quite sure what exactly is to blame for my unsubscribing. For that matter, I’m not really sure that Carl cares. :) I know that I’ve gotten fed up with the transition of the show into more of a marketing machine for Microsoft instead of a true resource for new developer technologies related to the .NET world. For example, hearing them blast the “nHibernate mafia” and suggesting that entity framework is the only real way to do ORM struck me as incredibly short-sighted.

I just don’t see how a Microsoft Regional Director can create an unbiased view into technology. The feeling that I get from listening to the podcast lately is that if it doesn’t come from Redmond, it’s garbage. This does not line up with my beliefs and values related to software development and technology in general.

Perhaps part of this is my own growth as a developer. I’d have to go back and re-listen to some older episodes to see if the content has been the same all along. It likely may have been, but over the years I know that my perceptions have changed dramatically and so part of this shift may be responsible for my declined interest in .NET Rocks.

Regardless, I thank Carl for the effort that he has put into delivering this. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. However, the time has come for me to move on. Enough is enough.

Whiplash

2008-08-27T22:13:29Z

Legos and Metallica … how much better can it get? You’ve got to watch this.

Latest Polymorphic Podcast

2008-08-13T23:12:25Z

Am I the only one that was bothered by Craig Shoemaker’s interview with Craig Newmark (craigslist.org)? I was very put off my Mr. Newmark using almost 10 minutes of a 22 minute podcast to stump for Barack Obama. For this podcast, I was interested in learning more about the scaling model for craigslist and what made it a success. Unfortunately, this discussion seemed to get lost in the politics.

I try to stay away from politics on this blog, and I wish that it would also be removed from my other sources of technical information.

Mr. Shoemaker: I enjoy the Polymorphic Podcast and have been a listener since episode 1. Please remember the mission of this podcast, and stay away from presenting highly charged political views on a technology podcast. I’ll get my political news from other sources. Thank you.

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T16:05:03Z

No greater comic genius has ever existed. Thanks for your thoughts and laughs.

Contributing to a record

2008-06-17T19:00:46Z

Many may be aware of Mozilla’s attempt to set a world record today for the most downloads of a software product (Firefox 3) in a 24 hour period.

After trying for some time, I was finally able to connect with the Mozilla servers to get my download of Firefox 3 on my desktop. I’ll be installing it shortly. :)

If you’re unable to connect, please be patient and keep trying. Eventually, you’ll get in and contribute to the record. :)

My first game console

2008-05-13T18:33:17Z

Yesterday, I finally purchased my first game console (thanks GWB). After a tremendous amount of research and thought, I decided to purchase an XBox 360. Of course, I considered the Wii, but the lack of HDTV output nixed me on that console. The PS3 supported Blu-ray, but this was not compelling enough to justify the price difference for me. With the console, I bought Tiger Woods 2008. I’d enjoyed earlier versions of this game on a PC, but the display and game play on the 360 is absolutely stunning. Wow!

Anyways, are there other games I should be looking at? Rock Band is on my list of games to get, but I was also thinking about Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. I want to be careful to not get sucked in and play too much. I really like to play games that I can sit down with for an hour or two, and then walk away.